posted April 02, 2012 01:35 AM
Eric - I Love the Perils of Pauline myself, and Gus, we'd love to have ya at one.....Well tonight my wife and I got our chance to see the masterpiece of Gance's NAPOLEON and it was of course brilliant! Any filmmaker out there should both see and study this film because there are so many techniques used and breathtaking shots all will be humbled...My wife enjoyed it, so I pushed it too far and said, "Ooh when we get home should I break out the 6 reel 16mm print so you can see why the Carl Davis score is so important..?" She said she would need some time before sitting still for that long again.....OK point taken, plus it is hard to go back to the shorter version anyway...A great weekend finalized with what could be the greatest cinematic achievement ever made... I even made the special thanks section of the souvenir program....woo hoo..

This film was on 16mm? Is it the 4 hour edit with the Carmine Cappolla score?

How many intermissions were at the event?

I had seen the restorative premiere on the final weekend day of Jan. 25th 1981, at NYC's Radio City Music Hall. Tickets were impossible to acquire, so nonetheless we resorted to scalped tickets at $40.00 each. Regardless of the pouring rain and being drenched to our toes during this ordeal, it was well worth the wait from the first reel snowball fight and all through to the climatic Polyvision Triptyich finale.

Coppolas' father conducted a live orchestration from the pit and after the finale the orchestra rose to a standing room only ovation. His gratitude was punctuated with a rousing coda of the Overture. -Stunning.

--------------------Isn't it great that we can all communicate about this great hobby that we love!

posted April 02, 2012 11:59 PM
Osi - I believe it is BUT, anytime you say something is the first it seems something comes out of the woodwork and proves you wrong, but I believe it was the first...

Michael - No disrespect to the version you saw, but the Davis score is breathtakingly beautiful and fits the film to a tee, much more so than Carmine's....As for 16mm I have the earlier restored version with the Coppola score, and the 1928 MGM version on 16mm. OH and there were 3 intermissions (a 15 min ; a 2 hour dinner break ; a 20 min)

BUT I am back home now, and sadly we cannot watch the full restored Napoleon w/ davis score again (I wish I could watch that once a year to remind me of what a perfect use of the medium can be) so I had to bring myself back down to earth with a simple melodrama on Standard 8mm, the early WB feature BRASS (1923, Entertainment films 5r x 200ft) starring the beautiful Marie Prevost and Monte Blue, but it is Irene Rich that steals the show and saves this from being a forgettable programmer. That and a couple of shots like the one of the baby in the crib w/ the "prison bar" lighting which was extremely powerful showed that the director was no slouch. Truth is Director Sidney Franklin is one of the unsung greats in regards to melodrama, just check out The Good Earth and Mrs Miniver for proof.

How does this Napoleon fare as a 5.5 hour edition? The Coppola edit was somewhat disappointing. There were many gaps that were in need of elaboration. A shame that the film is incomplete.I'm still glad that participating in the NYC program was a treat.Without a doubt that a silent feature hinges on a perfect soundtrack.

My beef with "The Artist," is that the score left out cues and it was without the feeling that it should have expressed in the narrative.

Were there any original cues from the original score?

Carl Davis and Kevin Brownlow have mastered the art of restoring Napoleon.

--------------------Isn't it great that we can all communicate about this great hobby that we love!

posted April 04, 2012 01:35 AM
Osi - Monte Blue went on to have a very long career that followed very similarly to what Snub Pollard's did. They both became background characters and worked almost up to their death. LOTS of TV in the 1950's...

OH and Michael - it works and flows perfectly at the current length. The storylines all feel fleshed out now (especially Violene) and no part of it feels fragmented at all.....I could have easily watched it straight through, but of course that would have been unfair to the musicians accompanying the film.... I am not sure how much of the cues for Davis' score were taken from the original, but I believe there was a degree of reference used (I'll have to go back to the Brownlow book to be sure)...I know it is scheduled to play in the UK next year, but I would kill for a print of this version...

posted April 04, 2012 03:28 PM
Well I got out INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS I guess not as classic or unheard of like you guy's B/W collections. But with sound a nice print super 8mm 3X 600 reel feature copy of a all time Sci-fi classic. Wow it still gets me with the ending when he kisses her at the end in the mine and turns out to be a pod chick.

[ April 07, 2012, 12:15 AM: Message edited by: Laksmi Breathwaite ]

--------------------" Faster then a speeding bullet, more powerful then a Locomotive "."Look up in the sky it's a bird it's a plane it's SUPERMAN"

Tonight I broke out the 28mm for the first time in ages....I watched a short called THE BACKYARD THEATER (1914) which is an early Keystone - Our Gang type comedy...This was actually released on 9.5mm and improperly credits Baby Peggy (who would not be born for 4 more years)as being in it.... I also watched a split reel of LA GITANEaka A GYPSY'S REVENGE (1908)and LES CAIMANS(1910), which was release #1 in the original 28mm catalog in 1912...Yep that's right.......Just watched a print that was 100 years old.....

posted April 07, 2012 12:39 PM
Man Oh Man, do I envy you, Dino! I personally think that one of the best things about this archive of ancient prints that you have is that your able to see many (or most) of these films with thier original intertitles (I think that's the correct term), which were often replaced when they were re-released.

One of the nice things about a number of the earlier Blackhawktitles, is that the earliest Mutual titles were actually released with an advertisement after the "The End" titles are done, which was a clock spinning fast and the words, "Time Flies When Watching Mutual's" (that may not be verbatim!)

--------------------"All these moments will be lost in time, just like ... tears, in the rain. "

but first...Osi yes the old Mutual end credit was a great one, and it is a shame that many silents have had the credits remade, because often that was how they got around copyright.

But tonight in celebration of Easter I needed a good resurrection movie.....plus I have a soft spot for this movie since I ran it at my theater in Florida so many many years ago....Funny story In the 1990's I was managing a video store and was watching this movie on the TV monitors, when a customer comes up to the counter to check out..."Do you guys pick what plays or is this cable?" the customer asked.. - "Oh I pick the movies.....haha....You can't watch the good ones all the time..Why do you ask, did you work on the film?" I should explain that the video store was in Studio City, which is where tons of movie people live, which is why I asked that question...."Haha, yeah sort of." He replied.."I wrote and directed it." Ever since then I have had a personal attachment to Two of a Kind (1983, 2 x 1600ft 16mm) beyond the obvious silly 80's movie attraction.

posted April 08, 2012 08:30 AM
I've never seen this film gt a good rating, but then, ratings are not everything. As shouwn above, it has the re-paring of Olivia and John. I've seen a few optical super 8 feature prints of this, but I've passed on it. ThanX 4 the screenshots.

--------------------"All these moments will be lost in time, just like ... tears, in the rain. "

posted April 08, 2012 09:23 PM
I can not remember ever seeing Two of Kind. I remember seeing Grease on TV a long time ago. In another part of the forum there is a thread on the best movie digests. Alien is one that everybody liked. It was on Ebay, so I bought it. I watched Alien the other night and it is a very good digest. Today, I watched a Blackhawk silent 2 reel edition of Laural and Hardy in Berth Marks. I also have 1 reel digest of this movie called Big Noise with a very thin record. I have since digitized the record a have it on my Iphone. I will have to see how hard it is to sync the movie with the audio.

posted April 09, 2012 08:06 PM
Have acquired Mighty Mouse - At the Circus and Hopalong Cassidy - Danger Trail. Mighty Mouse was faded but at least not red. Hopalong was nice, sharp and has good contrast.

posted April 10, 2012 06:10 AM
A Night to Remember 1958One of those films we often watch here and for oh so many years now its amazing this old acetate black and white print is still in good shape. Kenneth More stars along with a great British cast including Honor Blackman. Quite a few gaffs in the making which make it even more interesting, such as the children in the sort of play area which the Titanic never had for first class. Anyway, a great movie which is very repeatable and a decent print if you were lucky.

posted April 11, 2012 08:34 PM
Well, I found out about a few things. Berth Marks and Big Noise are separate movies. Same scenario but different movies. The version of Big Noise I have is made by Americom for silent or sound projectors. It has a LP record and superimposed titles for silent projectors and a magnetic strip for sound projectors but I had to play the movie at 18fps. At 24fps the voices were a little too high pitched.

posted April 12, 2012 09:27 PM
I watched some movie shorts tonight. Pierre Bear in Hunger Strife and Equinox. According to Castle Films A Hobbyist's Guide, Pierre Bear was not Pierre Bear but Fatso from a different cartoon. As a young kid in the seventies I was disappointed in Equinox. The box was bigger but the film was still the same 50ft size. Equinox was a very weird film.

posted April 12, 2012 10:38 PM
Akshay, I have a 60inch by 60inch Versatol tripod screen. The camera I am using is an Iphone 4S which does not have much zoom. I have to get real close to the screen to get a decent size picture thus the skewed picture.

Yes, I remember when KEN FILMS started using the 'slightly' larger boxes for the 50 foot releases. It looked like it was for a 100' foot digest, but still just 50' feet .

Kids today would NEVER understand these types of hardships we went through back in the 70's. They have multiple movies on one small disk, or 1000's of choices on cable/on-demand, etc., completely jaded. I wouldn't trade places with them for anything. We could appreciate one 3-minute, silent, black-and-white, old movie, much more that they appreciate a full library of modern movies.....

Oops, I've gone off the rabbit trail again! Sorry.

Equinox- yes, that was a really bizaar movie, and an odd release for KEN at the time, as they usually stuck with simple monsters, like Godzilla, rather that a movie like this that dealt with the occult and other wierd stuff.